Life as a supporter of Nottingham Forest at the moment is a little bit like that first day back at work after two weeks off for Christmas. Tedious!

Saturday’s embarrassing FA Cup exit at the hands of Rochdale is a real low point in our current turbulent run of two wins from 19 matches.

Take nothing at all away from the League One side but we had a side which featured close to £10M worth of talent on show whilst Dale handed debuts to two academy prospects – and still turned us over.

The manner of the 1-0 reverse if the most alarming aspect and in 90 minutes of football against a side struggling in the league below we barely tested the goalkeeper and hardly mustered a clear-cut chance to score.

Something has to change.

By change I am not for one minute suggesting that I am with the contingent of Reds that are already calling for the manager’s head after six months in the job.

Pearce is falling foul of his own success at the moment with the good start we had to the season raising already high expectations ten-fold.

If you were to take all of our results this season and throw them all up into the air and let them all drop back down into a different order I think many more fans who are currently calling for his head would be giving him the benefit of the doubt a bit more.

At the start of the season when everyone was saying ‘this is our year’ and ‘play-offs are a minimum expectation’, I was looking at things with a bit of perspective and saying that I would settle for top half with some nice football and to see a development of a group of players to put is in good stead for the future.

Forest are currently under a transfer embargo and can only sign players with restricted limitations so should Pearce leave, a new manager would have to work with another manager’s squad. I can’t imagine there will be too many takers for that role.

One thing I would like to see Pearce do is make changes in games much earlier that he is currently doing. If we are behind in a game and chasing a result roll the dice, show some guts and throw caution to the wind a little bit.

At the moment we are simply far too easy to play against and as soon as we concede we look like a boxer that has just been planted on his backside in the first round.

Hopefully the re-emergence of Jack Hobbs back to full fitness will add a bit of steel to a back four which is desperately short of confidence at the moment – fans need to remember that he won’t slot straight back in and automatically be the player he was before his injury however.

The message for me is clear. Give Pearce time to change the club’s fortunes let him bring a couple of loans in and see if we can stop the rot. Now we have a chief executive and John McGovern pulling the strings upstairs, I feel that the days of trigger happy sackings are a thing of the past, if current results continue I honestly think we may see Psycho tender his resignation.

On the 17th January we travel to Derby County for the first time since that awful 5-0 drubbing last season. What a time it would be for the players to get a result for their manager and get the season back on track.

By Lee Clarke

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